LG G6 Full Review

LG is finally back in the race with the launch of G6 and hoping to do something it was unable to do last year. To cut to the chase, the LG G6 is an astonishing smartphone that easily holds it own against the best smartphones ever made. Waterproofing, a more premium look and feel, upgraded cameras, more efficient use of space (bezels), good battery life- these are all the qualities which have upgraded in the device but what about the’flagships’?

There has been a little bit of arguing among android nerds about the decision made by the LG to ship this phone with a Snapdragon 821 processor, which is last year’s high-end silicon from Qualcomm. It is criticized that LG should have utilized the Snapdragon 835, which is latest from Qualcomm for 2017 flagships.

Basically, it was bad timings for LG, as the Snapdragon 835 was not being produced in enough quantities, and then whatever was being made was already spoken for by Samsung for usage in the galaxy S8. So LG was compelled to use Snapdragon 821 instead of latest one.The G6 has everything on its spec sheet minus the SD 835, so you can’t knock it too much.

The G6 is a glass and metal phone, with Gorilla glass 3 on the front , and Gorilla glass 5 on the back. The front of the G6 looks very modern, thanks to the rounded corners of the screen. It’s a screen rounded, too, rather than a bezel over the top to give it the look. The G6 is water n dust resistant and easy to hold.

Display, Connectivity, Battery Life

Display

The 18:9 screen, (which is branded ‘Full Vision’) is created by LG’s own screen division, LG Display. It extends the QHD resolution of its predecessor, making it ever more widescreen to boost the pixel count to 2880 x 1440 and uses LCD technology rather than OLED.

The corners are even curved to keep the aesthetic of the handset, rather than the sharp design most phones pack. It’s an interesting move but doesn’t really add much more than a novelty.

What is impressive is the addition of Dolby Vision / HDR 10 support for all manner of HDR content.

Connectivity

The LG G6 supports Cat.12 LTE, courtesy of Qualcomm’s modem, with 3-carrier aggregation for theoretical download speeds up to 600Mbps and uploads up to 150Mbps.

There’s, of course, Wi-Fi as with Wi-Fi direct and DLNA, and wireless screen sharing is supported by both Miracast and Chromecast devices. Bluetooth is the latest available version 4.2, and there’s GPS, GLONASS, and BDS for positioning. You also get NFC.

Battery life

The G6 battery is sized at 3300Ah, which is pretty large for a phone. Which is enough for typical one day of usage so long as you are not streaming videos or playing games.

4 – user interface

The new Full vision 18:9 display has given LG a few more pixels to work with, and now the display is essentially two squares stacked on top of one another.
LG has embraced this idea and made the ‘double square’ a feature of the user interface throughout.

This means, for example, that in the contacts menu the contact image is larger, more settings are visible and you’ll be able to see more Facebook on the screen without the need for scrolling through.

5.Performance

The G6 comes with a Snapdragon 821 and 4GB of RAM, but before you go grabbing your pitchforks over LG using last year’s processor, do realize that the SD821 is good silicon. Heck, it’s the same processor used in the Pixel and Pixel XL, and those phones operate just fine.

Telephony, loudspeaker, Text input

Telephony

LG G6 has dual SIM versions. It also offers number blocking and call screening. You can block numbers so Apps like WhatsApp and Viber will also blocks calls and messages from those numbers.

Loudspeaker

The G6’s bottom-firing speaker is reasonably loud but pretty funny. It is noticeably more powerful and loudness tend to be King on phone speakers.

Text input
The LG keyboard can change its size, hide/show the number row, add/remove some buttons and more.

Multimedia Apps, Audio quality

Multimedia app

LG G6’s Gallery app supports Albums and Timeline views. You can easily bring in more photos on the device – the G6 supports DLNA and cloud support. The Memories screen takes photos and videos and creates a short video out of them.

The music player itself is easy to use and has niceties like Folder view and automatic search on YouTube for the song’s music video. The video player supports QSlide if you want to view the video in a small, floating window. You can also manually load a subtitle file and change the font.

Audio quality

The LG G6 doesn’t have the impressive loudness of the V20 either with headphones or with an active external amplifier, but it’s still better than LG5

8.Camera

The cameras haven’t seen a huge improvement in the G6 over its predecessor, but there have been a few tweaks to the already impressive setup.

Just like the G5, the G6 has two sensors sitting next to each on the rear of the device. One is your typical camera with 13 megapixels, optical image stabilisation (OIS), f/1.8 aperture; the other has a much wider field of view.

9.Conclusion

In case of the LG G6, we hereby find the smartphone… fantastic! As I said before, you can’t even compare the G6 to last year’s G5. It’s as if they were made by two entirely different companies. The G6 is a real winner in my book.

TheG6 story may not have a happy ending. With Samsung and the Galaxy S8, the G6 might be a tough sell, with exception to the price. Is it acceptable to call the G6 a poor man’s Galaxy S8? On paper, they are very similar devices, both featuring water resistance, rear-facing fingerprint readers, great cameras, and OEM skins that we all wish we could ditch for stock Android.

To wrap this all up, if you are a fan of LG and a free Google Home unit (and maybe even a free TV), the G6 is a solid deal.

REVIEW OVERVIEW

Battery

8.8

Display

9.1

Camera

9.2

Performance

9.0

Software

9.0

Design

9.0

SUMMARY

LG’s return to form involves going back to basics. From the unique 18:9 display to the dual camera and excellent overall package, there’s a lot to like about the LG G6, which sets the standard for flagship phones in 2017.